Dirty Gertie
by Toodleoo
Summary: After the war, Hermione busied herself with the Very Important Work of restructuring the magical world. Now that she's retiring, her 90-year-old mum and daughter are trying to encourage her to cut loose a little bit. But then she runs into a mysterious man who everyone thought was long dead... at her mum's local bingo hall.
1. Chapter 1: 4 - Knock at the Door

**CHAPTER ONE**

**4 - Knock at the Door**

* * *

_June 2046_

* * *

Raucous laughter rang out across the night.

_Oh, for fuck's sake._

The Right Honourable Madame Hermione Granger-Weasley trudged up the walkway to her elderly mother's home, trying to decide if she should even bother ringing the bell. She could always Apparate upstairs to one of the guest rooms and bypass whatever was going on in the sitting room.

She sighed.

Normal people didn't have to wonder about things like this with their ninety-year-old parents. No, most folks just had to worry about their mum's bone density and whether or not she was comfortable sorting all her pills into the little slots on their day-of-the-week pillbox.

Hermione could only dream of having a boring parent. Someone who woke up at dawn, ate the same bland breakfast each morning, wore orthopaedic shoes, and went to bed early after a 5:00 P.M. supper. Someone who tidied up the place on the regular, whose love of cleaning supplies was only matched by her love of those plastic slips that suffocated the furniture. Maybe someone who grumbled at the antics of the youths in the neighbourhood as they sped by on the motorbicycles, or someone who enjoyed birdwatching with a pair of binoculars, all from the safety of their own home.

But _no_.

No, Hermione's white-haired mum was a spitfire who seemed to grow wilder in her twilight years, particularly after she retired and the Mr. Dr. Granger had passed away all in the same year.

Helen Granger had waited two years before she had started dating again.

Hermione had found out one grey, dreary day, when she had Floo'd directly into the fireplace in the living room as always. Of course, she'd read the statistics on coitus amongst older adults at elderly care facilities, back when she was doing her daughterly duty and researching things just in case her mother ever had a medical emergency. And Hermione had heard her mother mentioning Seymour Pritchard from the Highland Orchestra Guild more often, sure, but she'd never put it all together until she'd seen _far_ more of Seymour's _pritchard_ than she'd ever wanted to.

It was the first time she'd ever seen one quite that advanced in years—truly, that was the only perk to divorcing young and having a love life that rivalled the Giant Squid's. She'd never seen one older than thirty before, and she was shocked at the shape of the thing. When Seymour grabbed an embroidered pillow to cover the meat, he missed the two veg dangling precariously low, peeking out from beneath.

Did they _all_ look like that when they grew up?

Did the droopage factor necessitate tight-fitting briefs?

It just seemed so anatomically improbable.

That was also the day Hermione bought her mother a new sofa with a fitting plastic slip, and incinerated the old one on the spot.

Well.

As Hermione got closer to the front step, she knew she'd have to make a decision about whether or not she should chance seeing another of her mum's beaux in the altogether. Rather than barging in, she decided it would be helpful to eavesdrop. Setting down the bags jammed with new books from the library, she inched closer and tried to make out the conversation.

'…wasn't as bad as that time I dated a professional air guitarist!'

'A what, dear? How does one _guitar_ the air?'

'Trust me. It's a thing, Gran. Plus he made more money than I do teaching, which still makes me mad.'

'You young people! Now before your grandfather, I dated an actual guitarist with an actual band, and he had long hair that he…'

Rose, Hermione realised with relief. Well, at least wasn't another of her mother's gentlemen callers. While Hermione's son Hugo had idolised his Grandpa Arthur, it was Rose and Grandmum Helen who had grown close over the years. They both loved music and pub games, and when Helen retired up north in Inverness, Rose had taken a job teaching at Hogwarts just an Apparition away. They were a strange pair of troublemakers, and Hermione was never quite sure which one was leading the other astray.

Merlin only knew what she would find when she opened the door. She stood on the stoop, listening to her grown daughter and her ninety-year-old mum cackling away.

And took a deep breath.

And knocked loudly as she opened the door, hoping for the best.

In the front room sat two Granger women on the plaid sofa, swathed in blankets. On on end was Helen, clutching a wine glass filled with something that looked water, but which was probably not. Curled up on the other end of the sofa was Rose, a youngish woman with long red hair she'd inherited from her idiot father and the intelligence she'd inherited from the Granger side of the family.

'Hi, Mum,' Hermione called, toeing off her shoes. She spotted a bottle of vodka, another of tonic water, and a nearly empty pizza box on the coffee table. 'Rose, dear, what are you doing to your grandmother's intestinal tract?'

Rose leapt to her feet a bit inartfully. 'Mum!'

Hermione toed off her shoes, dropping her things on the bench in the entryway in order to give her daughter a warm hug.

'For the record, I was the one who ordered the pizza. If it makes you feel any better, it's vegetarian,' Helen said. She pointed to a roll of paper towels and gestured towards the box. 'Have a slice.'

Hermione frowned, staring down at the cheesy monstrosity. 'Mum, there aren't any vegetables on this thing at all.'

Her mum grinned. 'No, but there aren't any pepperonis or sausage, either.'

Hermione shot her a skeptical look. 'A technicality, then.'

And Helen threw up her hands in protest. 'Fine, fine… I'll eat a raw onion and a handful of moss and help myself to an extra calcium chew tonight. Will that make you feel better?'

At that, Hermione burst out laughing. 'I just don't _understand, _Mum. I wasn't allowed to eat sweets as a child at all for fear that my teeth would rot out. How are you the same woman who raised me on roughage and greens?' She unrolled a few paper towels to be a makeshift plate, tossed the slice on it, and found a spot to sit on the armchair.

Cheese and bread really were irresistible together.

Helen took a swig of her drink. 'Do you remember my seventieth birthday party?'

'Of course, Mum,' Hermione said. 'I met with the French Minister of Magic and moved the country's diplomatic schedule so I could be there with you in Paris for the whole week.'

'It was my gap year after Hogwarts,' Rose added. 'Poor Hugo, stuck in lessons while we were off having an adventure. Do you remember that enormous townhouse the French Ministry let us use?'

'There have got to be some perks to being the Chief Witch of the Wizengamot,' Hermione said. 'That place was phenomenal. I've never stayed so close to the Luxembourg Gardens before, although the lace uniforms on the house-elves were a bit off-putting.'

'Great service, though. Waking up to warm croissants is something I could get used to,' Rose said. Picking up a bottle of lime juice from somewhere on the floor, she started fixing herself a vodka tonic. 'Oh! And you got Gran into all the magical shops in Rue Claudel. Even that snooty hat shop where you got your leopard print trilby, Gran.'

'I love that hat,' Helen murmured. 'I wore it to the chamber music concert last week, and also the grocery store, and everyone at the bingo hall thinks it's_ tres chic_.'

Having finished her slice of pizza, Hermione decided to pour herself a little vodka neat. 'I'm still a little disappointed you didn't let me buy you a turban, mum. You looked smashing. Very dramatic.'

'I liked it,' Helen replied, 'but it felt a bit too Gloria Swanson, if you know what I mean.'

'C'est le vie.' Hermione saluted her mum with the vodka. 'Wait… What does Paris have to do with your pizza habit?'

'I'm getting there,' Helen replied. 'Hold onto your horses.'

'While you were busy with work,' Rose said, 'we went to Versailles and the Pompidou Centre.'

'And then I hired that nice young man to pedal us all around the city and take us to his favourite shops and cafes,' Helen said. 'It was a cultural tour with an insider's look at the city, and this is where the pizza comes in.'

Rose snorted. 'It was an insider's look at his bum. Gran, confess—did you hire him just so you could stare at his arse?'

Helen shrugged noncommitally. 'Who's to say it wasn't so you could stare at it?' She leaned over to her daughter and loudly whispered, 'It was a very nice one.'

Eyebrows raised, Hermione shook her head in disbelief.

Her mum continued on. 'At any rate, he zipped us over to that little island next to that enormous church for ice cream, and I realised then that I couldn't remember the last time I had the stuff.'

'I missed an ice cream trip?' Hermione asked, pouting. 'I love ice cream.'

'I had a scoop of pistachio,' Helen said, the word transporting her back into the Paris of her memory. 'And another of tiramisu ice cream. I also had a sort of an existential crisis, as I thought back on all the deprivation I'd gone through in the name of health and clean living. Why shouldn't I live a little? I'd clearly set my body up for as much success as anybody. It was time to start eating ice cream.'

'And pizza?' Hermione asked.

'And pizza.'

Rose raised her glass. 'I approve, Gran.'

'Ah,' Hermione said. 'Now I see.' She took out her wand and whisked the pizza box out to the rubbish bin and the paper towels back to the kitchen. Then she turned to Rose. 'What's this I heard about you dating a professional air guitarist?'

Rose groaned aloud. 'He was the worst. Do you remember Markus?'

Sifting through the mental list of all Rose's boyfriends over the years, Hermione took a guess. 'Was he the German professor from Durmstrang? Charms?'

'Nope. Finnish Muggle.'

'Did I meet him?' Hermione asked, mortified that she'd actually forgotten one of her daughter's suitors.

Exasperated, Rose rolled her eyes. 'Yes, Mum. We had dinner with you at your London flat. You were still the Supreme Mugwump then, so you were probably pretty busy with work.'

Not knowing what to say and feeling like a horrible parent, Hermione swallowed slowly as she gathered her thoughts.

'It's okay, you know,' Rose replied. She dug out a bag of jelly babies from underneath the pizza box and popped a few in her mouth. 'We broke it off right afterwards, so it's not like we were serious. I found out he'd been lying to me about his age. He also had absolutely no interest in training for another profession, which I found mortifying. Even if he made a lot of money then, you can't be a sixty-year-old air guitarist.'

'The strangest profession of any man I ever dated,' Helen said, trying to lighten the mood, 'was a chicken sexer.'

Rose almost spit out her drink. 'A what, Gran?'

The woman repeated herself. 'A chicken sexer. You know, someone who determines which gender all the newborn chicks are. He brought me to the coop once, and showed me how you squeeze the saucy little devils so they take a poo and you can see their undercarriage.'

'Please tell me that this was before dad,' Hermione stated. 'The follies of youth, and all that?'

'This was last year,' Helen said. 'Pete Paterson, from Paterson Poultry. It's a good half hour north of Inverness on the A9, but he was fit as a fiddle and still had all his hair. In his early seventies, too.'

'Gran!' Rose exclaimed. 'You were practically robbing the cradle.'

'Pfft!' she retorted. 'Once you're past a certain point, it doesn't really matter. He was nice to look at, but couldn't quite hold a conversation. Not that that mattered much, given the nature of our get-togethers—'

'Mum!' Hermione exclaimed. 'Too much information!'

Helen shrugged. 'Well, he retired and moved down to Newcastle to be near his grandchildren, so it didn't matter in the end.' She patted her daughter on the knee. 'Dearest, you know your father was the love of my life. I never wanted to marry again after I lost him. Still, he wouldn't have wanted me to work myself to death or never smile again.'

With a sigh, Rose pulled her blanket tight around her. 'That's so romantic, Gran. I hope I'll find the love of my life someday.'

For her part, Hermione didn't say a word. How could she, knowing full well that romance was a sham?

The old woman rose from the sofa, folding her blanket as she prepared her exit. 'Perhaps I can help. I'll introduce you to some of the men at my golf club. Felix Pickles has a son… whose name starts with a G, I think, and Alfred Spooner is a nice fellow. You could also join me for the Highland Orchestra gala next month. There's going to be a string quartet playing, and Derek Honeybun is still single, and he always brings friends. Or come with me to the bingo hall! Cyril Swearn passes out the bingo strips, and there's a new fellow named Stuart who won a jackpot last week. Also very nice hair, but he might be too old for you.'

Hermione began tidying up the table.

'You know, dear,' her mother said, 'I could find someone for you, too.'

'I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed, Mum. Besides, I'm not—'

'—not looking, I know,' Helen said, interrupting. She kissed her daughter on the cheek and her granddaughter on the forehead. 'Good night, my lovelies!'


	2. Chapter 2: 5 - Man Alive

**CHAPTER TWO**

**5 - Man Alive**

* * *

_A/N: For non-Brits, the NHS is the National Health Service, the health care that everyone's taxes pay for in the UK. Also bingo works a little differently in the UK than elsewhere. This version has 90 balls, and the tickets are long horizontal strips with 3 boxes high by 9 across. When callers holler out a number at everyone playing the game, there's usually a rhyming phrase that goes along with it, and it's these phrases that I'm using these as chapter titles. _

_And... remember that this is set in the future, so any references to anniversaries of Brexit or self-driving cars are a nod to that. If you're not a Brit and have forgotten who David Cameron is, he's the bloke who called for the Brexit vote (thinking it would never pass)... so it's all his fault._

* * *

The next morning found Hermione preparing Scott's Porage Oats on the hob. Her mother and daughter were both sleeping in, so she tripled the batch so they'd have something hearty to eat when they came downstairs. To prevent her mum from dumping heaps of Demerara sugar atop her oats, Hermione also cut up a few plums and set out a bowl of raspberries.

When everything was ready, she put a lid on the oats, fixed herself a bowl, and sat down at the kitchen table with a few of the morning papers and a cup of tea. The view from the breakfast nook was spectacular, overlooking the Beauly Firth, and the gorse was blooming a vivid yellow. She was reading all about complaints over souped-up cars terrorising the local roads in _The Inverness Courier_ when Rose came downstairs, still dressed in her pyjamas.

'Good morning, Rosie.'

'G'morning, Mum,' she mumbled, not fully awake yet. Bypassing the oats, she trudged over to the cupboards to find her gran's tea stash.

'The water in the electric kettle should still be hot,' Hermione called, trying to be helpful. Then she started in on _The Guardian_, reporting on the thirtieth anniversary of the Brexit referendum and the latest effort from the UK to rejoin the European Union. _What a self-important wanker, that David Cameron_, she thought for the millionth time. _The twat_. 'How'd you sleep?'

'Like a rock,' Rose replied. Tea in hand, she pulled up a chair next to her mum. 'Honestly, that mattress is more comfortable than the one I have at Hogwarts.'

'You'd think magic would be able to take care of that.'

'You'd think,' Rose agreed. 'How did you sleep?'

Hermione folded up the newspaper and put it aside. 'If I didn't love you so much, I'd ask to switch bedrooms with you.'

'That bad, huh?' Rose got up to grab herself some honey and a bowl of porridge.

'It's not that,' Hermione said, quick to clarify. 'It's not like I sleep any worse here than anywhere else. I just don't remember the last time I actually slept through the night. Something always wakes me up at 3 A.M., and then I'm aware of the fact that my lower back is killing me, and it's nearly impossible to fall back to sleep.'

Rose affected a geriatric accent and hobbled back to the table, clutching her back. 'My aching back! My poor sciatica!'

And Hermione swatted her with a rolled up newspaper. 'I'm not that bad!'

Her daughter rolled her eyes as she plopped into her chair. 'I know that. That's precisely my point. You're sixty-seven, Mum, not dead. You've got the time now that you finally retired from the Wizengamot. Go see a chiropractor or a Healer.'

'I suppose I could,' Hermione said. Her back had been bothering her for years, but it wasn't like anyone went to St. Mungo's for mundane health concerns. No, the departments there were for creature-induced injuries, magical bugs and diseases, potions and plant poisoning, or spell damage. 'I think I'd have to go to a chiropractor, then, since no Healer specialises in this sort of thing.'

'Good,' Rose said, an impish gleam in her eye. 'I've already got two grans. I don't need a third.'

'Hardy har har,' Hermione said flatly. Then she stopped to think about her circumstances. 'I wonder if I'm still in the NHS database? Am I still in the system from birth? They wouldn't have a death record on me, but they might find it odd if I show up having seen no doctors in the last six decades. I had traditional health care up until the age of eleven, although I think the last time I used it was the tonsillectomy when I was eight.'

'Oh…' Rose said, agitated questions flooding her mind, 'I never thought of that. Do I even exist according to the United Kingdom? No hospital has ever seen me. I don't have a birth certificate.'

'No, but you have a passport, even if you haven't used it in years. I had the Ministry make one up for you when you and your Gran took the Eurostar to Paris for that birthday party of hers. I think I may have it the safe in my London flat, or possibly at the house in Kent. We'll just update the photo if you ever need to use it.'

Rose took a deep breath. 'Okay, okay… So we're both fine, then, right? Besides, didn't you write some series of laws about this?'

Hermione smiled, proud that her daughter knew her accomplishments. 'You're damn right I did. There's a whole office now handling wizards and witches who want to establish themselves in the Muggle world. It's mostly used by people who marry Muggles and need to navigate a mixed family, but I don't see why it couldn't work for everybody. I just never thought I'd need to use it myself.'

With a flick of her wrist, Rose summoned the bowl of berries from the counter. 'For that matter, Mum, what are you going to do with retirement? I know it's only been two months, but won't you be bored out of your mind with nothing to do?'

'For now, I just want to spend time with your grandmother.' Hermione stood to clear her empty bowl and flip the kettle on for more hot water. 'I don't know how much time she has left, and—'

'I don't want to think about that, Mum.'

'You can't ignore it forever,' Hermione said sadly. 'Besides, your gran has more energy than most people a decade younger than her, and if her chicken sexer is any indication, she's living the good life.'

Drumming her fingertips on the table, Rose gazed out over the water. 'It doesn't seem fair that we get more time than she does. Why? Magic? Why should that earn anybody something as precious as time?'

Hermione crossed the room and settled her hands on her daughter's shoulders. 'I know. But even if most of us could live to 150 or 160 years, and most Muggles only to 80 or so, remember that you just never know. Why, your Uncle Harry's parents were in their early twenties when they were murdered.'

Rose sighed. 'I know.'

'Also keep in mind that your grandmother is stubborn enough to last well past 100. I'm convinced of it.'

'I'm stubborn enough to what?' Helen asked, traipsing into the kitchen in a long silk dressing gown.

'Nothing, nothing!' Rose said, leaping to her feet. 'Take my seat, Gran, and I'll bring you some porridge. What kind of tea?'

'Scottish blend.' She had a twinkle in her eye as she added, 'The whisky's under the sink if you'd like to make it extra Scottish.'

Hermione passed the _Courier_ over to her mum. 'I think it's hilarious that you've gone full native since you moved up here.'

'Oh, pish,' said Helen. 'You know your great-grandmother—my grandmother on my mother's side—was a MacLeod. I spent many a summer up here when I was a young girl.'

'So that's where I get my love of shortbread?' Rose asked, carrying a bowl and a teacup over to her gran.

'That might just be butter tasting delicious,' Hermione said.

'Alas!' Helen cried, removing the teabag from her cup. 'I'll never be able to speak with that marvelous Scottish accent. Now then,' she said thoughtfully, 'who will be joining me today?'

'I'm in,' said Rose. She turned to her mother. 'How about you?'

Hermione hesitated to respond without knowing exactly what was planned. Thankfully, she now had a reasonable excuse she could pull out. 'Maybe? What are your plans?'

'Today's bingo,' Helen said. 'Tuesdays are six tickets for £6, plus you get a complimentary cup of coffee while you're playing. You should join us.'

'It's surprisingly fun, Mum!'

Hermione groaned. 'No thanks, Mum. Now if it were a museum? Yes. A walk through a public garden? Sure. But bingo? Not a chance.'

Helen shook her head. 'I didn't raise you to be a snob, dear.'

'You took me skiing in St. Moritz as a child.'

'That was just because your father's hygienist had a timeshare!'

Hermione and her mother stared each other down in a stalemate.

And Rose piped up. 'What's a timeshare?'

* * *

That was how Hermione found herself in the local bingo hall.

After lunch, the Granger gals ordered a self-driving car to pick them up from Helen's property on the outskirts of the city, and they rode down into the centre of Inverness to Crowley's Luxury Bingo Parlour. It was a plain white building, but the flashy sign with its red and purple lights was anything but subtle.

'We have to buy our tickets before one o'clock, or the coffee isn't free!' Helen said, checking her watch as she scooted inside.

Hermione was aghast. If she thought the exterior was tacky, the interior was even worse: gold lamps, red and purple tables edged in a goldish trim, plush red and purple seats, a patterned carpet that coordinated with everything. The whole colour palette was intense and oversaturated, giving no rest to the eye.

Grinning, Helen looked back over her shoulder at her daughter. 'No need to be glum! You know, you could even win a little something for yourself.'

Hermione and Rose hustled to keep up. 'I don't need anything. Rose, do you?'

'Since I'm not independently wealthy and I'm working on a pitiful professor's salary, yes. I'd love to win a little something extra.'

'Maybe today will be your lucky day!' exclaimed Helen as she led her daughter and granddaughter over to the ticket seller. 'I won ten pounds last week.'

'Hello, Helen!' called one woman in a green sweater vest. 'Are these your granddaughters?'

Hermione liked her right away.

'Daughter and granddaughter, actually,' Helen said. 'Hermione and Rose, this is Doris. Doris, Hermione and Rose. I'd stay and chat, but we have to buy our tickets.'

'Of course,' Doris replied. 'You'd best get over to Cyril before 1:00 if you want that coffee.'

It was evident, as they carried their bingo strips and cups of black tar masquerading as coffee through the hall, that Helen was quite the social butterfly. No fewer than a dozen people had asked how she was doing and if her astrantia were doing well with less shade and if these lovely women with her were family. A few of them remembered Rose from the last time she had joined her gran for an afternoon of bingo, and they asked after her students and if she had a new man in her life.

And then it was time to get down to brass tacks.

They lined up their tickets on the table, and Helen fished around in her handbag to find several daubers to mark their numbers. She passed them out so that everyone was armed.

Then the caller climbed onto the small stage down front with a microphone in hand, a short man with squinty eyes and the physique of a badger. 'My name is Mervyn Pinfield, and I'll be your caller today. We're playing four corners to start,' he said, his voice ringing out over the hall. 'Eyes down!'

The whole room fell silent as the balls started rolling around in the metal cage, and once several were all out in a line, Mervyn began announcing. 'Number 4! Knock at the door!'

Hermione scanned her tickets quickly. Only one of the six had a 4, so she stamped it.

'Number 88! Two fat ladies!'

The whole room called back, 'Wobble, wobble!'

This one was much better. Hermione had it on three tickets. Frankly, she felt the call itself was a big inappropriate, but she couldn't overhaul the way people talked about women's bodies in an afternoon, so she let it pass.

'Number 30! Dirty Gertie!'

Rose started sniggering under her breath at that one as she blotted out the number on one of her tickets. 'Ah, I love this. Thanks, Gran.'

But Helen didn't even look up as she daubed away. 'Anytime, dear. Anytime.'

They continued for a few sets. Hermione won £20 and another cup of wretched java, Helen won another twelve tickets to use on a future game, and Rose almost walked away with the day's jackpot of £1,000. Unfortunately, when she went to claim the prize with the last number, another bingo patron claimed it at the exact same moment.

The caller asked them both to come down to verify their wins.

And a funny thing happened.

'This is so strange,' Hermione said, looking at the man with long salt-and-pepper hair standing beside her daughter, 'but that fellow looks exactly like someone I once knew.'

'Who? Mervyn?'

'No,' Hermione said. 'I know it sounds crazy since he died when I was a girl, but I swear, that man must be related to an old professor of mine.'

Helen gave her a glance. 'That's Stuart. He's new around here—moved to town a few months ago, but he's friendly enough. I think he has a boat down at the marina.'

'Friendly? That confirms it's not who I thought it was,' Hermione said. She put the cap back on the blue dauber she'd been using and slipped it in her mother's purse, then did the same with the dauber Rose had left behind. 'Will they hand out two prizes, or will they split the pot?'

Her answer arrived in the form of Rose waltzing back to the table with the cash in hand, fanning it out and waving it in the air. 'Five hundred pounds! I need to find a place to spend this.'

'Maybe some new clothes?' Helen asked. 'Or a weekend holiday someplace warm?'

'I've never been to Malta,' said Rose, thinking out loud. 'I'll bet I can find cheap airfare online.'

'All in all,' Hermione said, 'this wasn't too bad. The calls are a bit odd, though. What's wrong with two ladies being a little pudgy?'

'Absolutely nothing,' Rose said. 'Which is why I'm taking us for ice cream before we head home. Gran, should we say goodbye to any of your pals before we go?'

Ten minutes later, and Helen was still wandering from person to person as they all moved in the general direction of the exit. Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione spotted the other jackpot winner—Stuart Somebody-or-Other—and went to take a closer look.

It really was uncanny.

The shape of his nose, his colour of his eyes, his height, even his current age… It all fit. Except that this man looked healthy and content, and the man she had once known was neither of those things.

He walked over to Helen and Rose, shaking her daughter's hand. Hermione couldn't make out what they were saying from twenty paces away, but it must have been something about her because Rose started waving her over.

After all that hubbub, he looked up and locked eyes with her. He recognised her, and all her doubts vanished.

It was _him_.

He was _alive._

Helen hadn't noticed anything amiss, so she began making introductions just as she had been doing all afternoon. 'Stuart,' she said, 'This is Hermione. Hermione, this is—'

But she got there before her mum did.

'_Severus_. This is Severus.'

* * *

_A/N: If you enjoyed this at all, please let me know!_


	3. Chapter 3: 3 - Cup of Tea

**CHAPTER THREE**

**3 - Cup of Tea**

* * *

All four had suffered through a stilted conversation about the weather and the historic castles and battle sites of northern Scotland while they stuffed themselves with ice cream paid for with Rose's windfall. The cafe was crowded, and they couldn't risk being overheard by Muggles discussing things that weren't supposed to exist, like Dark Lords and enormous snakes and blood supremacy.

Afterwards, Helen invited Stuart… or Severus… back to her home for more conversation. She filled the kettle and Rose pulled out all the tea canisters while Hermione started in on her questions.

'You're alive?' Hermione asked, trying to keep from bursting into tears at the sheer shock of this revelation.

Snape being Snape, he was, of course, perfectly capable of controlling all his emotions. That said, he couldn't quite keep himself from rolling his eyes at her opening gambit. 'Demonstrably.'

'May I hug you?' she asked next.

He paused, just staring at her for moment as though she'd grown a third eye on her chin. When he finally spoke, it was slow and cautious. 'Why?'

She shook it off. 'I'm sorry. That's too invasive a thing to ask. I just want to know you're real.'

At that, he reached across the table and pinched the back of her hand. 'Real enough for you, Granger?'

_Yes, it is_, she thought. It didn't actually hurt, but it did sting a bit. 'Does anyone else know you're alive? Minerva, maybe? Kingsley?'

He shook his head. 'No. And it had better stay that way.'

'You have my word. Not even Harry.' Hermione considered how much her word meant to the man, and thought that she had better make her promise of silence as clear as possible. 'Do you need me to swear an oath of secrecy? Rose can be our binder and—'

'Not necessary, Granger.'

'Okay,' she said, touched that he decided to trust her. She kept pushing her luck. 'How did you make it out of the Shrieking Shack?'

He leaned back in his chair and stared out at the horizon so he wouldn't have to face her during his confession. 'The house-elves. They brought me to the kitchens for healing, but when I awoke to learn that, A, I hadn't been eaten by a giant bloody snake, B, my wand was missing, and C, nobody knew I was alive? It was time to cash out and start a new life for myself, away from the world that fucked me over a hundred times before ever throwing me a bone.'

Hermione was impressed. Based on the memories Harry had shown her, she wouldn't have guessed that Snape had any money stashed away for this kind of escape. And he'd gone undetected by the Magical world for decades, too. 'Your profession?'

His answer was short, to the point. 'I worked in biochemical research with the NHS. Primarily on the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases, if you're actually interested. Endothelial dysfunction, inflammation, angiogenesis, vascular and cardiac remodeling, et cetera.'

Fascinating. It was certainly related to the kind of meticulous work he performed as a Potions master, but you needed a rather specific education in order to work in the sciences. 'Did you falsify credentials to get hired?' she asked.

'No.'

'So…' she began, hoping he'd continue his explanation.

'What do Hogwarts professors do over the summers, Granger?' he asked.

'Ooh!' Rose interjected, bringing over a tray with tea things for everyone. 'I can answer this one. I use mine to travel, and sometimes to conduct my own research. Maybe I'll write up an article or two. Except this summer, which I took off to spend time with Gran and mum, who's currently enjoying her first year of retirement.'

Snape nodded brusquely. 'I spent my summers taking summer courses at the Sorbonne. Just in case I needed another escape plan, I wanted to be able to have a Muggle profession and a language that let me leave the country.'

Chuckling to herself, Hermione had to hand it to him. He'd known that the first war hadn't really ended anything, and he was preparing for all possible outcomes when the shit hit the fan again. 'Smart, Severus. Very smart. You weren't just a double agent… You had an exit strategy for your exit strategy.'

'My turn,' Snape said, helping himself to an herbal tea with raspberry notes. 'What did you just retire from, Granger?'

'The Wizengamot,' she said. If he wanted to get to the facts as quickly as possible, she could be just as terse as he was.

'Why retire?' he asked. 'The median age in that courtroom was probably 110.'

Hermione pushed back. 'Must be the Muggle-born in me showing. I was never going to stay in a government post past seventy.'

'How old were you when they threw you on the bench? Nineteen? Twenty? How long did it take before all of Wizarding society just gave up and handed itself over to a pack of famous children?'

'Twenty-five,' she replied, defiant and more than a little miffed that he was accusing her of riding her fame into glory. 'I was not a child. I helped rebuild Hogwarts quite publicly in that first year after the war, during which time I took an accelerated course at Cambridge and received my Graduate Degree in Law.'

'Mum's the most accomplished witch in Britain,' Rose stated, rising to her defence. 'Everybody says so. And while public consensus is often a sign of stupidity, this time, everybody is right.'

'Who else could have divided the Wizengamot into separate judicial and legislative entities?' Hermione asked rhetorically. 'Who could have convinced all of Wizarding Britain that "election" wasn't a dirty word, and that they should all have the right to choose people to represent their interests in the Ministry of Magic? Who else could have singlehandedly convinced everyone to accept Muggle parliamentary procedure as a basis for a new Wizarding common law?'

Snape had the decency to look suitably impressed at this point.

'Well, that last one was Harry,' Hermione said, needing to lay out all the facts and give credit where credit was due. 'He didn't completely understand common law or parliamentary practice at the time, but after a little coaching, he had no problem delivering speeches about how there was no need to reinvent the wheel.'

He snorted back a laugh. 'Potter. Of course.'

'I'm not necessarily proud of how heavily I relied on Harry's heroic stature to get things done, but I wasn't above using his fame to fix a broken system. And if I played off everyone's anti-elitist fervor in a disconcertingly populist fashion, it was only so I could create a system that treated everyone as equal under the law, whether their surname was Malfoy or Yaxley or Smith.'

'And the Sacred Twenty-Eight let that happen?' Severus asked.

'Sacred, my foot,' Hermione said, snorting back a laugh. A satisfied expression came over her features. She happily fought to keep Narcissa out of Azkaban, but she wasn't going to let the woman and her ilk rebuild society in their own image to hold onto power. 'The _Tainted_ Twenty-Eight still tried to throw their weight around, sure, but the _Nouveau Magique_ was running things by then.'

He hummed circumspectly.

'Do you really not know any of this?' she asked. 'You never caught up with a newspaper just to find out what was happening?'

'No. I wanted a clean break from you all.' Then he turned to Rose, changing the subject abruptly. 'You're a professor at Hogwarts?'

'Yep,' Rose said. 'I've been teaching for twelve years now in your old post.'

'Of your own free will?' He sounded skeptical.

Rose shot a questioning look at Hermione. 'Yes?'

'Because you_ like_ your job?'

She smiled sweetly. 'I really do. The students can be a handful'—Snape scoffed aloud at that—'but they're sweet and I love helping them learn.'

He continued his rapid-fire questions. 'Your workload unreasonable? How long does it take you to finish your marking each week?'

'Usually around four hours. Sometimes five.'

He spat out his tea and gasped for breath.

Concerned, Hermione clapped him on the back and handed him a glass of water. 'Are you all right, Severus?'

He didn't even look at her, but kept his attention on Rose's last words. 'Four hours?'

She nodded.

'Four,' he said, incredulous.

'Er… yes?'

'Only four? How the fuck is that even possible?'

'Well, I rotate written assignments amongst the older students so I'm never reading more than one group of essays each week. That's the bulk of my grading, but then I skim over the other assignments from the other students so I know where they're at with their understanding of the projects we're working on. Reesy and Tipple do the rest.'

Snape's jaw had dropped. 'The headmaster lets you pawn off your work to house-elves?'

Now it was Rose's turn to defend herself, which she did with aplomb. 'I'll have you know that there are a number of house-elves who are competent brewers with creative approaches to magic. Witches and wizards would do well to listen to others more often and realise that they don't have a monopoly on good ideas.'

He nodded, looking appropriately chastised.

Rose continued. 'In my first year, I noticed that a few of the house-elves were spending more time than usual in the lab, so I taught them the basics. I also noticed that the headmistress's idea of an acceptable workload was insane. Who wants to read hundreds of essays every single week? Not me. How is that good for the students anyway? If you give them quizzes on the basics to make sure they've memorised what they need to know—and let the house-elves grade those—and have them only write an essay once every month, they will be far more likely to spend the time working on a passable essay. Each one is worth more in the calculation of their grades, after all.'

'Headmaster Dumbledore had rather different ideas on educational requirements in my time,' Snape said. 'Students wrote a minimum of eight inches every week. Conveniently enough, he instituted that policy the year he passed on his own teaching to Minerva.'

Rose gasped in horror. 'You have got to be kidding me. Eight inches per student per week?'

'Oh, yes,' he said. 'I had rolls of parchment. Rolls upon rolls upon rolls. It was utterly pointless. Asking the little darlings to think for themselves was challenging enough, but getting them to pull words out of their puberty-addled minds on a regular basis was about as useful as a marzipan dildo.'

Hermione nearly choked on her tongue.

'Just doing the maths,' Rose said, topping off her teacup with a little more hot water, '280 students times eight inches, or 2,240 inches to read every week? That's reading a 50-meter dash worth of shitty student essays? Every single week?'

Snape glared at Hermione. 'And some students wrote quite a bit more than was necessary.'

Rose began to laugh aloud now. 'Of course she did. Oh, Mum, I'm glad you weren't one of my students. You would have driven me batty. I dock points when students go over the length limit.'

'You do _what_?' Hermione asked, horrified that her own flesh and blood could be so cruel.

'At least her penmanship was legible,' Snape said. 'There were several Quidditch players who could barely hold a quill upright, and if I couldn't read it, it wasn't getting graded.' He shuddered. 'I do not miss that life.'

Helen sat down at the table with a roll of ginger nuts to pass out. 'Do you miss magic, Stuart… er… Severus? Which would you prefer?'

And remarkably, Hermione observed the strangest thing from Severus Snape. He smiled, with warmth in his expression and kindness in his eyes… at her _mum_. 'Either. I was Severus for the first thirty-eight years of my life and Stuart for the remaining forty-eight.' He opened the biscuits and took two for himself. 'Who said I gave up magic?'

'But didn't you?' Hermione asked. 'Your wand was left behind where you died… disappeared…'

'Giving up a wand is not the same thing as giving up magic. Think about it, Granger. What do you need a wand for if you've the mental focus and power necessary?'

He had her there. She'd been trained on wandless, wordless casting since she was a teenager, and she used her wand very little in her day-to-day work life in the Ministry. 'You do need it for certain steps in brewing, don't you?'

He and Rose both nodded.

And here, Snape was now smiling at her _daughter_ with warmth and understanding, the two of them sharing a strange camaraderie.

'How about Occlumency?' Hermione asked, hazarding a guess.

'Wands aren't needed, but I doubt anyone magical would ever invade the mind of the mild-mannered retiree Stuart Smith of Inverness.'

'Legilimency, then?'

And here he tapped the end of his nose to signal that she'd found it. 'It never hurts to gather all the information you can.' He leaned over to Helen and patted her arm. 'If you don't mind my saying so, Helen, you're the first person who stumped me in over forty years.'

'Me?' she asked, startled. 'What did I do?'

'You locked me out of your mind,' he said. 'I've taken a perfunctory Legilimency scan on almost everyone I've ever spoken with, and you were the first person to block me when I met you last month. I assumed you were magical yourself.'

Hermione thought it over. 'Could it be related to the spells I cast on my parents when I was younger?'

He looked thoughtful. 'Could be. Or it could just be that Helen possesses a little magic of her own. You got it from somewhere, after all, and it seems that your mother displays at least one other characteristic of a magical life.'

Now Helen was curious. She leaned closer. 'What's that?'

'Etiquette says that I'm not allowed to ask a lady her age, but I've never been accused of being a polite man. How old are you, Helen?'

'Ninety as of last March,' she said.

'You don't act like a ninety-year-old woman,' he said. 'Eighty, at best. I'm certain your daughter has explained how longevity works among witches and wizards?'

She nodded, and looked over at her daughter. 'Do you think he's right, dear?'

_Well._

This was all new to Hermione. Frankly, she'd retired this year thinking that she'd move up to Inverness to be near her mother during the last few years, to help her around the house or find medical care if she had any complications.

The thought that her mum might live past one hundred, and live well? That was better news than she could ever have dreamed of, even if it did mean that she had to start reconsidering this retirement business.

'I don't know, Mum. I hope so…'

The whole group fell rather quiet then, and Snape took that at his cue to leave. He thanked Helen for her hospitality, told Rose it was a pleasure to meet her, and let Hermione walk him to the door.

'One last thing, Severus,' she said. Really, the whole afternoon had been astonishing, and she now had a great deal to think about. Still, as much as the prickly professor was in there, he had softened so much since she had seen him last. And he'd answered all her questions, which didn't make sense with how private a man he seemed to be.

'Yes?' he asked, turning to face her. The sunlight shone off the whites and greys in his hair, and this close, Hermione could see all the fine lines around his eyes and his mouth. He was probably her mum's age himself, or just a little younger, and he didn't look it, either.

'Why did you answer all our questions today? You didn't have to.'

He looked past her into the house, down the hall to where the kitchen lay. 'Your mother was the first person to greet me when I moved to Inverness. I find that I like her.'

Hermione nodded.

'I even enjoy your daughter, despite the fact that she's far too relentlessly optimistic for her own good.'

She nodded again.

'As for you,' he began…

And here, Hermione was waiting for him to declare that he respected her intelligence and kindness, that he trusted her with his secrets, that their years of surviving the machinations of Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle had bound them together in an indelible way that few others shared.

'…At least you're not Potter or Weasley.'

He Apparated with a _pop!_, leaving her unsatisfied on the step.

* * *

_A/N: Have any of the rest of you ever wondered how age works in the Potterverse? How old is Minerva, really? JKR once said Dumbledore was 150, but then listed his birth year as 1881. What happens if you're a Halfblood... do you watch one parent outlive the other by decades?_

_As usual, many thanks to those of you taking ten seconds out of your day to leave a review. It's really the only reassurance I have that you're actually reading and interested in continuing this story!_


	4. Chapter 4: 8 - Garden Gate

**CHAPTER FOUR**

**8 - Garden Gate**

* * *

_July 2046_

* * *

After their initial encounter at the bingo hall, Severus "Stuart Smith" Snape started popping up in Hermione's life on a semi-regular basis.

Honestly, Hermione assumed she'd never see him again. Why would she? It seemed like he wanted to protect his privacy and that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Wizarding world, and by extension, nothing to do with anyone in it. Given what he'd been through, Hermione wouldn't have blamed the man.

Yet he had already lodged himself on the outskirts of Helen's social circle in town as a quiet man with an incredibly lucky hand at the bingo jackpots, so Hermione surmised that she was the intruder here, not the other way around. He lived in Inverness now, while Hermione had her life back in London to return to whenever she wanted.

Or did she?

Since she'd retired from the Wizengamot and most of her other Ministry posts, she didn't have to be in London much. Only had to be in the city for the odd meeting here and there consulting for the Department of International Magical Law. The rest of her time was her own. No more meetings with ministerial brown nosers, no more 4 A.M. Floo calls with the Japanese ambassador, and no more photo ops with Harry and whoever was currently the Minister for Magic.

While she had a few work friends scattered across the boroughs of London, most of her family and friends were elsewhere. Harry and Draco had long since abandoned Grimmauld Place for an estate in Sussex, and Neville and Rose were both at Hogwarts, Hugo was in Dublin of all places, and Luna had landed on an asparagus farm outside of Brussels.

So Hermione really could put down roots wherever she wanted to, as long as she kept her London flat. She felt a responsibility to plant herself near her aging mother, just so she could enjoy her company and make her comfortable in her twilight years, and she hadn't spent much time at the house in Kent since the kids had grown up.

Perhaps it was time for a move.

In the meanwhile, her mother had the extra space in her house, although Hermione decided that she really did need to look into finding a better mattress for the guest room she was staying in. Inverness was a comfortable enough town with all sorts of things to do despite the fact that it was halfway to Norway.

And she could find that chiropractor that Rose had encouraged her to find.

One of Helen's fellow guild members for the Highland Orchestra had a cousin whose husband's hairdresser's neighbour practised in town, so Hermione was connected with someone in short order. She found herself at the office of Dr. Hamish Bakshi for her first adjustment and manipulation.

Thirty minutes of being snapped and cracked into different shapes, and Hermione left feeling like a new woman.

Dr. Bakshi was a fucking genius.

Afterwards, she Apparated back to her mum's garden, expecting to find her daughter and her mother engaged in one of their regular bouts of heavy duty gossiping and summertime day drinking. Instead, she found Rose and Snape weeding the herbs beyond the gate, bickering over the medicinal properties of burdock root. She froze in place, listening to the two of them go on about things she vaguely remembered from her N.E.W.T. exams years earlier.

'If you steep it in boiling water for an hour or more, it should act as an anti-inflammatory agent,' Rose said.

'The anti-inflammatory benefits are so mild, you might as well not even use it,' Snape argued. 'Just add dittany if you're brewing a potion. Now if you're looking at burdock root as a dietary antioxidant for the reduction of—'

'Hi, Mum!' Rose called, spotting her across the way. She waved her over. 'Severus is here,' she said, stating the obvious.

Snape looked up and nodded in her general direction. 'Granger.'

'Snape,' she replied.

'Yes, yes,' Rose said, aware of the vague discomfort between them. 'You two are just the best of chums. Mum, I asked Severus to go over my latest article on paracetamol replacement potions before I send it off for publication. Play nice, please.'

'I'm nice,' Hermione said, keeping any trace of huffiness out of her voice. 'I'm especially nice now that I splashed out on a chiropractor.'

'Ooh!' Rose cooed, wiping her dirty hands on a spare towel. 'Your back is feeling better now? I know you were a bit wary of this kind of treatment at first.'

'I stand corrected,' she replied. Then she waggled her eyebrows. 'Get it? I stand…_ corrected_.'

Rose groaned.

'Truly side-splitting, Granger,' Snape replied, his eyes on his gardening.

And Rose smacked his arm. 'Hey! You need to play nice as well.'

'Fine,' he said, filing a basket with some thyme and mint. '_Do_ tell, Granger. I'm simply dying to hear every detail of your experience at the doctor's office. In fact, there's nothing I love hearing more than medical stories. Were there bodily fluids involved? Don't leave anything out.'

Hermione ignored the man and his sarcasm. 'Dr. Bakshi says I'm carrying tension in my neck and shoulders, and he also gave me a few exercises to strengthen my lower back.'

'That's great, Mum.'

'He also said I should learn to relax and try to reduce some of the stress in my life, and I told him that I should be able to comply easily, given all my new free time.'

'I just hope you can sleep better at night,' Rose said. 'I didn't appreciate it in my twenties, but now that I'm well into my thirties, I can tell you that I adore a good night's sleep.'

Hermione wrapped an arm around her girl and kissed her cheek. 'It's a good thing you never had any tiny banshees screaming and crying through the night as they held your sleep hostage. You were a terrible sleeper, and your brother was even worse.'

'Reason number seven-hundred and fifty two why I'm glad I never had kids,' Rose said, shuddering and tossing a few more sprigs of thyme into Severus's basket. She looked over at the man, discomfited by the display of familial affection, and threw him a bone to rejoin the conversation. 'How about you, Severus? Eight hours every night, or are you nocturnal?'

'Eight hours? That sounds excessive,' he said, frowning. 'When I was a young man, I had atrocious sleeping habits. Then I began following da Vinci's polyphasic sleeping habits, but seven hours suits my constitution these days. Although sometimes the rocking of the waves lulls me to an early slumber if I'm reading something particularly boring.'

'Waves?' Hermione asked.

'I'm moored at Avoch, on the north side of the firth,' he said, groaning just a tad as he rose from his knees. It was the first sign Hermione had seen that he was feeling his age.

'You live on a boat?' she asked. She'd forgotten that little tidbit her mum had mentioned earlier. 'Is there enough room?'

'It's roughly the size of every other place I've lived,' he said. He picked up the basket of herbs. 'Actually bigger than the London flat I had whilst I toiled for the betterment of mankind and the health of us all.'

Yes, yes... So the NHS…' Hermione said, leaving the sentence open-ended to allow him to elaborate.

'Yes?'

'Did you like your work?' she asked.

He shrugged. 'I developed a few hypertension medications that seem to be of use, even if the bastards kept the proprietary rights to whatever of mine sold. My colleagues were tolerable, and largely left me to myself. It paid the bills. Until it didn't, as they forced me into a retirement at 65. Not that I took it until I was 75, but they never knew that.'

'A clever trick. How did you manage that?' Rose asked. She gathered up the gardening things and led the others back towards the house.

'Forged a few documents and engineered some creative data entry,' he replied.

'Why?' Hermione asked, opening the gate for the others, whose arms were full. 'If you didn't love your job, why would you want to work longer than you needed to?'

'It was self-protection, Granger,' he said, walking to the back of the house. He waited for Hermione to open the door for him. 'For one, I needed to build a bigger retirement account. I only began working in an official capacity at the age of forty, so I knew my public pension through the NHS would be a pittance, and I hadn't put anything away in a private pension scheme.'

'You should have pulled a fast one on the goblins like Mum did,' Rose said, dropping the spades and trowels just inside the door. She joined Severus at the sink to wash the soil off.

He quirked his eyebrow at Hermione, who blushed. 'Er…' she mumbled, 'did you know that Galleons were made of solid gold?'

'_Were_?'

'Yes, well…' Hermione's voice trailed off. 'If one has to rescue one's parents from Australia, but only has around a thousand pounds to one's name, primarily in funny gold coins that nobody takes and that can't by exchanged at a certain bank run by disgruntled goblins who refuse to speak with you, and one takes those coins a Muggle goldsmith who melts them down into bullion…

'Fuck all,' he muttered under his breath, quietly berating himself. 'Why the _everlasting_ fuck didn't I…'

'So that's how Gran has this big old place,' Rose said, unaware of his inner turmoil, 'with the killer view and the gardens and all that, and that's why Galleons are only gold-plated these days.'

'Why are you teaching at Hogwarts, then?' Snape asked her pointedly. 'Shouldn't you be living on a private island somewhere, with cabana boys fanning you with palm fronds?'

'Nah,' Rose said. 'I'm like Mum and Gran, I'm afraid. I'll always want to have something to do. Although cabana boys don't sound too bad, come to think of it. Are there cabanas in Malta? I still have that bingo jackpot to spend.'

'Besides, she turned me down when I offered to give her something to get her started,' Hermione said, pulling some turnips and aubergines out of the fridge. 'I also decided it might be best to stop the generational transfer of wealth, so I passed some rather stringent inheritance laws.'

'You little communist,' Snape said accusingly.

'Nah,' Hermione said. 'My two houses loudly declare that I'm a firm believer in private property. I've a decent nest egg set up now, but I won't keep it forever. I need to figure out what I'll need for retirement, and then I'll set out giving away the rest of it.'

'Maybe you should do_ that_ in retirement,' Rose said. 'Manage the money, pick pet projects to work with. Change the world, one grant at a time.'

'Direct the will of the people through charitable giving, like all the great philanthropists of the past,' Snape said, shaking his head.

'Maybe,' Hermione replied, letting the idea plant itself in her brain. 'Maybe… Now I just need to figure out my living expenses for the rest of my life.'

'I see a series of spreadsheets and colour-coded charts in your future,' Rose said.

Hermione smiled. Her daughter knew her so well. 'It's a morbid thing, though, estimating your own lifespan. The average life expectancy for Muggles is roughly 80 years old in the UK, although some make it to 100. The average life expectancy for witches and wizards is 140, but some make it… Come to think of it, I don't know how common it is to live past 150 or 160 for us.'

Rose snorted. 'It's like dog years then? Just divide our age by, say…'—and here she did the maths in her head—'1.75 to get what our age would be in Muggle years?'

'Don't say that!' Hermione exclaimed, clapping her palms over her ears. 'That would make me 40... no… just _under_ 40 in Muggle years. I'll have to come out of retirement if that's true. And I wouldn't be able to retire again for another forty or fifty years!'

'That's utter tosh,' Snape said, leaning his body against the kitchen counter. 'Division by 1.75 would make me a 49-year-old man. I certainly don't object to being back in my late forties again, but I think you'll note that only a blind man would ever confuse me for fifty or even sixty, and you, Granger, do not look like a forty-year-old woman.'

She stood there for a moment, her mouth open like a fish. Then she snapped it shut and poked Snape's chest. 'I'd be insulted if it weren't for the fact that I agree with you.'

'So it's not an equal ratio of Muggle years to magical ones,' Rose said, diffusing the tension. 'Is there a way to find a better comparison?'

'No one's ever calculated it,' Snape said. At that, he took out his wallet, rifled though its contents, and dropped his driver's license to the counter. 'I estimate, myself. About a decade ago, I took twelve years off.'

Hermione picked it up to examine the thing. It declared that Stuart Smith was 75 years old and had a post box in Ardrishaig, a town she'd never heard of but that sounded decidedly Scottish. 'Interesting…'

'I'll have to take off another decade soon enough if I don't want my GP to become suspicious.'

Hermione frowned. 'You don't think her hackles will be raised when her 75-year-old patient is suddenly 65?'

'Think, Granger,' he replied. 'When I adjust the numbers, I change doctors. You'll have to do it as well if you keep seeing your chiropractor for long. For that matter, since you dip your toes in the Muggle world from time to time, you should be planning on reorganizing your Muggle life every so often as you age. Nobody can know how old you really are, so you can't develop long-lasting relationships.'

All the things she'd have to do came to avoid alerting Muggles to her presence flooded her brain then: moving house, uprooting connections with friends, never keeping friends for too long, lest they become aware that something was different about her.

For the first time, she considered that maybe there were reasons that Pureblooded witches and wizards avoided Muggles other than just blind prejudice.

'Hmm…' she hummed, mulling it all over. 'I have a lot to think through here.'

Just then, her mum appeared in the doorway with the mail. 'Oh, Severus! I'm delighted you're here.'

'Greetings, Helen.'

She began to giggle. 'So formal, you are. Do you have everything you need for dinner?'

Hermione glanced at Rose, mouthing the word "dinner?" as a question.

Rose nodded as Severus replied to Helen. 'Yes, of course. I brought a half dozen eggs and some broccoli from the market, and your granddaughter assisted me in the garden with all the additional greens. Seven o'clock gives us enough time to eat before the concert, yes?'

'Marvelous!' Helen declared. She wandered around to the others and swatted Snape's arse with what appeared to be a copy of the latest edition of The Oldie, Britain's premiere magazine for the grey-haired masses. Then she turned to Rose. 'I think we'll keep him. I hate to cook.'

'I do appreciate a decent work surface,' Snape replied, 'and the boat's galley is rather lacking.'

For her part, Hermione was simply befuddled. What the hell was her mother doing with Snape at a concert, and why were both Rose and Helen in on this?

Her mum seemed to notice this. 'We're going to see a Fleetwood Mac tribute band playing at the Hootananny downtown.'

Hootananny, a popular venue for nibbles and music in central Inverness. Hermione had been there a few times, and had always enjoyed herself. It appeared that her mum and daughter had invited Severus out for a night on the town.

Being left out of their plans felt like a swift kick in the ribs. 'Oh.'

'You don't like Fleetwood Mac,' Rose said, preparing to chop the onion Snape had just handed her for whatever dish they were preparing together. 'I doubt you'll like Fleetwood _Mock_.'

'No, I understand,' Hermione said, convinced she was keeping her composure. Even though she didn't care for the band, she still might have wanted to join everyone. She could have had a good time there, even if it meant listening to some poor singer mangling "Black Magic Woman" and "Little Lies" and other things of that ilk. At the very least, she would have wanted to be asked to dinner. Not they _had_ to include her in anything. She plastered a smile on her face as aggressively as she could, and she faced her daughter again. 'You're probably right about that. Well, enjoy your evening.'

And as she left, she snagged a bag of carrots, a container of hummus, and a bottle of wine for a dinner alone in the garden.

* * *

_A/N: Oh, dear... Also, why hasn't anyone done this trick with the Galleons before?_


End file.
